


one at a time

by meminisse



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, M/M, also complaining with your gay friends about relationship drama, ambiguous relationships with a close female friend, mentions of events in 6x22 "Temporary Duty" and 9x15 "Bottoms Up", you know when you see someone from your past and all of a sudden you're that age again? like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:48:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27977619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meminisse/pseuds/meminisse
Summary: Lorraine has a bad habit of shaking up Margaret's life. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it isn't. Or, an ambiguous friendship through the years.
Relationships: (background), B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan & Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Helen Whitfield
Comments: 17
Kudos: 30





	1. helen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 1964.

"Helen. Get up." Helen makes a sound like _whrrrfgh._ "Helen, I'm serious. I have a very bad feeling about today."

Helen rolls onto her left side to face Margaret, squinting in the light slanting through the gaps in the curtains. "Honey, you say that every time Hawkeye and BJ come to visit us." Her Virginian accent has gotten stronger since she moved back home, and it's always especially pronounced when she first wakes up. Normally Margaret loves it, but today she's too keyed up.

"This time I'm serious."

Helen does not appear perturbed by this. She stretches her spine, curls her toes, arches her neck. "And why do you think something bad is going to happen?"

"Don't analyze me."

"I'm not analyzing you, sweetheart. I am asking you an honest question. Why do you think something bad is going to happen?"

"I have a twisting feeling in my gut. It's a premonition."

Helen groans and tunnels back under the covers. "That's menopause."

"It is not!" Margaret takes the covers off Helen's head and glares at her. Helen keeps her eyes resolutely shut.

"Gas, then." She opens one eye to peek at Margaret, but Helen always knows when to stop pushing, so she props herself up on her elbows and heaves a long sigh. "Okay, so it's not gas. But you have no reason to think that something terrible is going to happen. The last time you said that, the worst that happened was you got high and ate half a box of Rice Krispies dry."

"That wasn't exactly good."

"Well, it wasn't terrible, either. And anyway, you're too young to be having premonitions. Nobody has those until they're at least fifty. Now lie down and go back to bed before the dogs wake up." Helen pats the space next to her. They lie together in silence, Helen with her eyes shut and Margaret staring at the ceiling, listening to the world shake itself awake outside the windows.

After a few minutes, Margaret sits up and says, "Maybe I'll go clean the house." She snatches her robe from the foot of the bed and flips the sheets back, but her feet have barely touched the ground when she feels arms around her waist, dragging her back.

"No you don't, Major," Helen says as she flips Margaret over and onto her back. "The house has been cleaned five times in the last two days; there's no need to scrub it again."

"The dishes," Margaret says quickly. "I don't think we did them. And I really think that the kitchen could be cleaner." She tries to sit up again, but Helen takes her hands, laces their fingers together, and presses them gently back into the mattress.

"We did them last night. And if you clean again, we won't have any more soap. Then you'll have to buy more." This is a very good point. Margaret tries to think of a rebuttal, but she can already feel her body starting to relax. "And the whole place will smell like bleach."

They stare at each other before Margaret finally grumbles, "I hate you."

Helen grins. "I know." She kisses the corner of Margaret's mouth. When she pulls back, she brushes a little hair out of Margaret's face, looks at her long and hard. She doesn't look afraid, or worried, because Helen knows everything there is to know about her. She looks like she's searching for an answer, and Margaret thinks that maybe she'll feel better if she has one, so she shakes her head a little to say _I don't hate you_ and _I know it's stupid_ and _do you still love me?_ And Helen knows what it means, because she smiles and kisses Margaret's temple.

"It'll be okay," she says.

"I know." Margaret finds she believes it more as she says it.

They lie back down again, this time a little closer. They make it all of three minutes before Helen says, "Now what? No chance in hell we'll be able to get back to sleep now we're up."

"It's six thirty. We have time for a quickie."

Helen grins and raises an eyebrow. "Dirty mind. I like your style, Houlihan."

*******

Helen and Margaret watch in bemused silence as BJ and Hawkeye appear to do a complicated variation of rock-paper-scissors over the roof of the taxi. Whatever it is, BJ wins, because he grins and starts heading up to the house, while Hawkeye thumps his fist on the car and starts unloading the bags.

BJ lifts her clean into the air with his hug. "What the hell was that thing you did with Hawkeye?" Margaret asks once he sets her down and Helen is slapping him on the back.

"Rock-paper-scissors to see who got to say hello first and who had to get the bags. I won."

"But he always picks paper."

He grins at her. "Yeah, but that's just a secret between me and you."

"What's a secret?" says Hawkeye. "The fact that I'm not cut out to haul luggage around? That definitely isn't; everyone knows that I don't work out." He drops the suitcases on the ground and holds his arms out to Margaret. They hug and kiss and twirl around and around on the lawn like long-lost lovers until Hawkeye loses his balance and almost tips them into the rhododendrons. By the time they recover, BJ and Helen have headed inside, probably to get coffee and complain about the price of mulch.

Before Hawkeye can demand a tour of the house, Margaret darts into the living room and presents a neatly-wrapped package. "Before I forget, happy birthday."

Hawkeye frowns. "It's October. My birthday was in July." She just shrugs at him. He narrows his eyes at her but rips the package open dramatically. As soon as he sees what's inside, he collapses into cackling laughter. 

"Holy shit!" He holds it up to the light: a cobalt-blue Hawaiian shirt printed with gigantic multicolored pineapples. "Margaret, it's perfect!" He yanks his sweatshirt and t-shirt off and over his head, fumbling with the buttons of the new shirt as he tries to stop laughing. "It's a— a summer print in _flannel_ , I'm— I'm never taking this thing off."

"And you say I have no sewing talent."

He stares at her with wide eyes. "You mean you made this?"

"It was the worst fabric I could send away for."

"Oh my god, I love it." He crosses the room in two long steps and kisses her hard on the mouth. It takes Margaret a minute to remember that Hawkeye is still shirtless, and that anyone looking through the window would probably be scandalized. This is, of course, when Helen enters, pointedly clearing her throat.

"Boy, I can't leave you two alone for a minute." Helen shakes her head, but she's half-laughing already. "Kids these days."

"Helen, did you see my shirt?" Hawkeye demands.

"Only every day for the last three months. The sooner you get it out of my house, the better. Can you believe she thought you wouldn't like it?"

BJ comes in bearing a tray of coffee, but nearly drops it when he throws one hand over his eyes. "Holy hell, Hawk. What _is_ that thing?"

"It's my birthday present! Isn't it great?" Hawkeye says happily. "Best thing anyone's gotten me in years."

"I got you a pizza oven," BJ mumbles into his mug.

Margaret smirks. "Hunnicutt, a pizza oven—"

They spend a week like that, bickering and hiking and eating okra straight out of the pan. Margaret and Hawkeye are somehow talked into getting on motorcycles, which is bad enough; halfway to Norfolk, BJ and Helen decide to race the rest of the trip, which is worse. By the end of it, Margaret is threatening to find the number of her old divorce lawyer, and Hawkeye swears that he thought he was going to die before they got off the highway. BJ and Helen are too busy comparing the finger-shaped marks on their shoulders to listen.

They go to the National Gallery because they have an exhibition on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. (Personally, Margaret doesn't understand the appeal of vague shapes and monochrome canvases, but she'll put up with it for Hawkeye and BJ.)

She gets lost after about an hour, and she's starting to panic when she finds Helen standing in the corner of a room dedicated to quick shapes and loud colors. Helen looks up as she approaches and smiles. "Hey, come see this. It's me." Margaret hooks her hand into Helen's elbow: from far away, the drawing is gray and unremarkable. But up close, recognizable shapes pop out and twist away as soon as they're seen, like water, or sand. There are bits of white, or light yellow, like the first tentative brush of light in a gray March sky. Mostly it looks like birds, or ribbons, or something else hard to define. It looks like someone you could love for a long time and never get tired of trying to figure out.

They stand there for a while peacefully, arm in arm, just watching it move. At some point, the last of the knotted thing in Margaret's stomach falls away. _Everything is fine,_ she tells herself, and believes it.

*******

On BJ and Hawkeye's last day on the East Coast, they're walking back to their car, heading home from the Natural History Museum when they pass a woman in Class A's. Helen still automatically salutes when she sees the eagle pin; Margaret's been out for long enough that she settles for a nod. But the woman stops and throws her arms out.

"Is that all you've got for me?"

"Holy shit," says Helen.

"Hey, don't I know you?" says BJ.

"Lorraine?" says Margaret.

"What?" says Hawkeye.

Without saying another word, Lorraine brushes past Helen and wraps Margaret into a bear hug. Lorraine smells the same as she always has; the fabric of her uniform is stiff under Margaret's chin. Her shoulder blades feel the same under Margaret's hands as they did at fifteen. She clings to Lorraine a little longer; she wonders wildly which version of Lorraine she'll see when she finally pulls away. But she does pull away, and Lorraine is… almost the same. A little older than when they last met in '51. She's got crows' feet now, and deeper laugh lines. But her grin is the same as always.

"Aw, Margaret. No hello?"

"I— oh, Lorraine. It's good to see you. With a bird pin, no less!"

"Seven months and counting," she says proudly. "But hey, you look good! I haven't seen you since we ran into each other at your mother's house, what, two years ago?"

"You look better! God, that feels like a lifetime ago— but what are you doing here?"

"I'm in Fort Worth these days; Medical Recruiting called me out here for a conference. I fly back tonight." Margaret isn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. "But I could ask you the same thing, Houlihan!" It's jarring. Nobody's called her Houlihan in years except for Helen. And yet here's Lorraine, saying it with as much affection as she always has, reminding them both that the nickname was _hers_ first.

"I— I live here," she manages at last. "In Virginia."

"With me," Helen says quickly. Margaret bumps her elbow in silent thanks.

The grin on Lorraine's face sharpens as she turns to Helen. Margaretholds her breath. "Well, Helen Whitfield, as I live and breathe. How long's it been?"

Helen falters almost imperceptibly, but recovers quickly. "Since Fort Benning, I think."

"Where are you stationed these days?"

"Nowhere. I left." Helen smiles pleasantly as she says it, but Margaret's insides clench even tighter. That kind of smile usually means that someone's head is going to get bitten off in the next few minutes.

Before Lorraine can comment, Hawkeye cuts in. "Who's this?" She'd almost forgotten he was there. "I don't believe we've been introduced."

"Lorraine Anderson. Margaret and I go a long time back."

"Hawkeye Pierce, enchanted. Lorraine… I think I've heard about you." He turns to Margaret with one eyebrow raised. She's about to make a _shut up_ face, but realizes that everyone is looking at her.

"Oh, you probably have," Lorraine says airily. "I'm good for stories if nothing else." Somehow Hawkeye and Lorraine figure out that they've never met, but she does know BJ (or was it JB?). Helen explains that the three of them were all at Fort Benning around the same time, which is how _she_ knows Lorraine. Lorraine remembers the time she visited Margaret in Korea. BJ tells the story of the guy who borrowed Colonel Potter's horse. Everyone laughs.

Meanwhile, Margaret watches the three most constant figures in her life (and BJ) milling about on the pavement in Washington, D.C., telling stories about the war, and feels like time and space are coming undone.

Eventually Lorraine says she has to get going, and Helen makes some polite excuse about having to head home, and just like that the whole ordeal is over.

"Wait, wait," says Hawkeye, leaning forward to address her from the backseat. "That Lorraine— is she the one…"

"The very same," she says through her teeth, trying to send him a telepathic signal that she _really_ doesn't want to talk about it around Helen, and could he please show a little sensitivity to her situation considering that she doesn't bring up _his_ relationship drama around _his_ partner-husband-associate-whatever.

Hawkeye either doesn't get the message, or chooses to ignore it (which is more likely.) "Oh-ho," he says with a grin and settles back. "Terrific." He sounds like he's rolling his eyes; she swivels around, but doesn't catch him doing anything but giving her a sarcastic little smile and looking like he's about to start making totally unwanted comments.

That's fine. She can play dirty, too. "Hawkeye Pierce, I've been listening to your—" she stops and leaves three beats for _McIntyre-Hunnicutt,_ because even if Hawkeye can't be subtle she still can. _"—drama_ for God knows how long, so you can just shut up with that sanctimonious look."

He knows exactly what she's talking about. His eyes widen and the sanctimonious look does drop right off his face, only to be replaced by outrage. "Now wait a minute, first of all, that's not _my_ drama, I had no active role in that. It just _happened_ to be taking place around me—"

"That certainly hasn't stopped you from _bitching_ about it for the last ten years!"

"What are you talking about?" says BJ. They ignore him and keep glaring at each other.

"The two situations aren't even comparable! The rivalry was completely imagined in mine, and now they basically get along, not to mention the whole way that we all met. Yours wasn't anything like that."

"Pierce, you've got it ass-backwards as usual. The rivalry _was_ partly real in yours, unless you've forgotten the Horribly Awkward Disaster of 1956."

"Sometimes I feel lost when I listen to you talk," BJ sighs.

"And sometimes I feel like a motherless child," Hawkeye shoots back without breaking his glare at Margaret.

"Don't bother, BJ," says Helen without looking away from the road. "I've known my wife for twenty years and I've come to accept that there are things I'll just never understand about her. I've never had one, but I'd put five dollars on husbands being the same way."

"We're not married," Margaret corrects automatically.

"But are you my wife?" She can tell Helen is trying hard not to smile.

"Of course. What a stupid question." And just like that the argument is over. They all go back to joking and talking like normal.

But there's something unfamiliar crackling in the air between her and Helen. Margaret rests her head against the window as they speed home and thinks, _Goddammit, Lo. You do this every time._


	2. lorraine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1935 - 1950.

"Lorraine, it's me."

"Margaret Houlihan, how long has it been since I've heard your voice? It feels like a lifetime!"

"Drama queen. It's only been a few months."

"Which begs the question, what's happening? It's not like you to call long distance at… Jesus Christ, it must be nearly two in the morning over there. What's going on? Is everything alright?"

Margaret doesn't know how to answer the second question, so she ignores it. "Lorraine, I got a promotion. I'm a major."

"You're kidding. That's incredible!"

"I'm not."

"Well, I was going to say I don't believe it, but I do— if it was going to be anyone, it _would_ be you. I'm going to run around Oahu and tell everyone I see about Major Margaret Hou—"

"Lorraine, wait. There's more."

"…More good news? Don't tell me you're getting assigned to Hawaii."

"No. They're sending me to Korea."

*******

The first time that Lorraine shakes her life up, Margaret is fifteen and her heart is already starting to harden. They're at a dinner party for the officers on base, two weeks after the Houlihans came to Fort Bragg. Her parents fought bitterly before they came, but now they're circling the room as a unit, with big fake smiles plastered on. Margaret, of course, is not part of the unit, so she's sitting on the side of the room and not making any trouble when Lorraine shows up and plops down right next to her.

She says hello and introduces herself with a big smile, a real one. Margaret warily says hello back. Without asking, she finds out that Lorraine's family was stationed in Kansas before this but likes Fort Bragg much better so far, that she has three sisters and wants a dog but her mother's allergic, and that she's also fifteen. Eventually Lorraine realizes that Margaret isn't responding, which is normally the point in conversation when people get offended and walk away. But instead she says, "Listen, Houlihan, how are you with heights?"

"Fine. Why?"

"Perfect. I'll show you when we get there."

Margaret follows Lorraine's peach-colored dress as they wind their way through men in identical dress uniforms and women in their best dresses, past gigantic vases of flowers beginning to wilt in the North Carolina heat, down a corridor lined with portraits of dead men and ceremonial sabers. Eventually they reach a small door, behind which is an tight spiral staircase. "Are we allowed up here?" she asks, but Lorraine is already taking the stairs two at a time. By the time Margaret reaches the top, Lorraine's already wrenched the door open.

They stand on the tiled red roof of the banquet hall, the base spread out before them. Lorraine steadies herself on Margaret's shoulder. "There were two boys before you got here. Joey and Ray. They told me about this place, said it was used as a lookout during the Civil War. Personally I think that's a crock of shit, but you can't beat the view." Margaret watches Lorraine's dark hair fluttering in the breeze, and wonders if she'll ever be able to swear that fluidly, that easily. Suddenly Lorraine turns to her and grins. "What do you think?"

Margaret tentatively smiles back, but isn't brave enough to keep looking right at her. "You can see everything here."

"I know. That's why I love it." Margaret remembers that Lorraine's hand is still on her shoulder. She decides not to shrug it away.

Lorraine points out the officers' club, the barracks, the airfield, the motor pool; Margaret wonders why someone would pick her to be their friend. They stand for a little while, admiring the grounds, before she finally says, "I'm hungry."

Lorraine's smile dims. "Oh. Well, we could go back down for dinner, if you'd like."

"Or," Margaret says, "we could steal a plate of those shrimp things and eat them up here."

Lorraine smiles again full-force, and Margaret is in love. "Then we need a plan."

Within two weeks they're inseparable. It takes four minutes and seven seconds to get from the Andersons' house to the Houlihans' (three minutes nineteen seconds if you cut across the lawns.) They do homework together, act out Macbeth, stay up too late giggling and go to school half-asleep. _This is what it's supposed to feel like,_ she thinks, _being happy._

One night, a few weeks after she turns sixteen, Margaret's rigging together a rope out of torn-up skirts to climb out the window when she hears her father mumbling about how it's _odd for those girls to spend so much time together_ , wondering if it's _really appropriate for them to be carrying on as they do_. Her blood boils with indignation and fear and something else she doesn't care to identify— but her mother (for once in her life) steps in and tells him not to worry. _Man wasn't made to be alone, Alvin. Neither was your daughter._ Margaret breathes a sigh of relief, but doesn't stick around to hear the rest. Whatever he thinks of it, she and Lorraine remain joined at the hip.

Margaret cries when Lorraine's family is transferred to New York before the start of senior year. It takes them nearly an hour to say goodbye between the tears, tissues, and promises not to be separated. But the rest of the year is the quickest time has ever passed. They write back and forth at least once per week, trading barbs about the new girls in their classes and making plans for when they see each other next. Her mother jokes that they're like young lovers, and Margaret wonders if that isn't so far off.

Senior year ends, and they meet again at UVA. They decided long ago that they would go into the army, and the only way to do that as women is to become nurses. For a little while, it looks like things are going to back to exactly the way they were: Lorraine and Margaret, alone together against the world and everything that might rip them apart again. But they aren't army brats anymore. The risk of having every connection they make be snatched away by someone else's decision is gone. Now there's a chance to make more friends, become someone else, grow away and apart from LorraineandMargaret. Fine. Good. The only problem is that Margaret doesn't really know how to do that.

But Lorraine does: she starts making more friends, going to parties, getting dressed up on Friday nights and coming back very late or not at all. She's always been freer, easier, more outgoing than Margaret, but the difference is slowly becoming more pronounced.

The only thing more terrifying than being alone again would be being left behind. So Margaret goes to the same parties, and learns to dress up too, and eventually she makes friends with Lorraine's friends, and things aren't so bad. She tries to be free and easy like Lorraine, and that isn't so bad either. She laughs at jokes and learns to drink people under the table. She looks at boys, and they look back— she's young and pretty and knows how to have a good time, so there are plenty of options.

There's a boy named Danny, who swears he would marry her if he weren't chronically broke. Seamus, who says she's a little too feisty for him, in every sense of the word. Ned, who likes that she wants to be a nurse, but he's a Communist so he doesn't approve of the army thing. Michael is the one she likes best, but he's got absolutely no ambition, and one day he gets drunk and yells at her so she leaves without saying a word.

Sometimes the sex is good, and sometimes it's not, and once she comes home to after a particularly disappointing date to find Lorraine passed out over her organic chemistry notes and wonders if this would still have happened if it had been Lorraine in her shoes. Standing there, Margaret wonders if she wants to belike Lorraine, or if she wants someone just like her. It's a dangerous question. She pushes it down.

*******

The second time Lorraine turns everything over, they're 22, and it's on a dare. Stan Burbank makes a stupid comment about how they're basically married already, and then someone else dares them to kiss. And everyone's drunk, and it's a joke, so they do it. It's brief, but it feels like it's been coming for a long time, like a natural extension of the intimacy they already share. And then they leave the party and go back home, and they try again, for longer.

It happens a few more times, always late at night. Sometimes they're sober, and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they're so exhausted from running around the wards and getting yelled at all day that they fall asleep in each other's arms. Each time they kiss, they go a little further. But Margaret isn't afraid, because Lorraine would never hurt her. "It isn't serious, just fooling around," Lorraine says one night. Margaret nods, but her mind drifts during lecture the next day and she thinks, _it would be so simple if it could be real._

They're lying in bed— whose room it is doesn't matter— and the radio is going. Lorraine rolls over and kisses her slow and deep.

"Sometimes I wish I hadn't known you for so long." Lorraine is uncharacteristically serious.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it's difficult to be someone's best friend, and their lover, and their oldest friend too. Do you know what I mean?"

Margaret has known since the beginning that it wasn't going to last, that ending it would be for the best. And yet a tiny part of her is crumbling into dust as she says, "Yeah. I know."

"Listen. I love you, Margaret Houlihan."

"Lorraine," she whispers, but she doesn't know what the end of the sentence is.

"Just listen to me. We'll always have our earlobes." They both smile at that. "But you and I are too similar to last for long. And endings like that are always messy." She takes Margaret's hand and squeezes it gently.

"Then we won't start anything we'd have to finish. I'd rather have you in my life as my friend than not at all," Margaret says in as normal a tone of voice as she can manage, and finds she means it.

They drift a little after that. On the outside, it looks the same as it always has, and they're still more honest with each other than with anyone else. But at least some of the closeness is in memory of what they once had, a way of honoring their old promise to stick together forever. Things are different, and they both know it.

In the fall of '44, they get their assignments: Lorraine to Fort Worth, and Margaret to Fort Benning. This time, they don't cry when they part.

It's hard at first. Old men hit on her, young men feel her up. She can't hit the officers, but she accidentally-on-purpose spreads lard on the bottom of any shoes she can find lying around, and doesn't laugh when they fall over. They're different people now, but she misses Lorraine all the same.

And then, one day in October, she goes one step too far and tries to break into a major's kitchen, and the legendary Helen Whitfield catches her. Helen is already a lieutenant at twenty-five, beautiful and sharp and funny, and for some reason Margaret is quickly swept into her orbit. It's dizzying. Here's someone who likes her completely independently of who she is with Lorraine, who doesn't care that she's very particular about everything, who picks her to tell secrets to late at night.

At first she thinks that Helen is similar to Lorraine, which makes her feel more at ease, but after a few weeks she realizes that they're only alike on the surface. Both are quick to help others, and quick to laugh. They can talk to anyone about anything. But she's a better liar than Lorraine ever was; she's a champion of tall tales and bullshitting competitions. She can talk herself out of almost anything.

Margaret makes a list of all the ways they're different: Lorraine is slow to anger. She's an open book, all her hurts and angers there for anyone to see, but they blow over in a matter of hours.

Helen doesn't like to ask for help. When she has a problem, she never tells anyone about it— she hides it from everyone else and tries to solve it on her own until it's about to blow up in her face. Sometimes it's hard to tell what she's thinking. And when she gets mad, she stays mad. Sometimes she gets moody, and mean, and wanders off on her own. But she always comes back to Margaret's room in the barracks with a self-conscious little smile and says _sorry I ran off like that, did you miss me when I was gone?_ And Margaret always says, _I was just about to start, but here you are now._

It's as close to love as anything else she's ever felt.

So they go out on Helen's shiny black motorbike, and Margaret pretends not to be afraid, although Helen probably can feel her arms shaking as she wraps them around Helen's waist. They hold the joint title in every shooting competition on the base, and go out dancing with the other girls every Friday and Saturday. When the Allies win the war, Margaret and Helen throw a party that brings people from miles around. Everyone who attends has a hangover for three days. After that, they become legendary hostesses, which Helen says is ironic considering that they keep ditching their parties in order to hide in the kitchen and whisper about the other guests.

*******

The third time, Margaret is 26, and she hardly ever gets mail, but she gets a telegram one day in early November: Lorraine is coming to Fort Benning.

For the first week, she watches as Helen and Lorraine circle each other like curious dogs meeting for the first time, each trying to figure the other out. They ask each other strangely pointed questions and give each other sideways looks. Margaret feels like her intestines are wound up like a clock spring whenever she sees them together. She tells herself it's just because she wants badly for them to get along, and not because she keeps getting inexplicable flashbacks to when she had to introduce her new boyfriend to an old one at a party in college.

After eight days at Fort Benning, Lorraine asks her if Helen is seeing anyone. Margaret's insides are boiling at the thought of Lorraine and Helen _together_ , but she manages to keep herself from exploding. "I don't think she's that way inclined," she says through her teeth. But Lorraine shakes her head and smiles, somewhere between exasperated and fond.

"So much for trying to be subtle about asking if you two were up to anything."

"Oh." The pang in her chest is supposed to be relief, but there's something else mixed in. It feels strangely like longing, like an ache. "Well, no. Like I said, she's not… like that."

Lorraine gives her a long look, but in the end she just nods and says carefully, "Maybe it's better that way. Less complicated." She pauses on her way out of Margaret's room. "But if you need girl advice…"

"I wouldn't trust you for advice on how to pluck a chicken, Anderson." Lorraine just laughs and flips her off.

So they're sort of like the three musketeers. Someone comes up with a stupid idea, someone irons out the flaws in the plan, someone gets what they need to do it. But it's always Lorraine buying the drinks, Margaret planning everything down to the minute, and Helen making sure they don't get caught. It's Margaret and Lorraine who argue, and Helen who steps in to save one from the other when they get too honest, but sometimes Margaret still feels like she's the one caught in the middle.

And always, a strange tension between Helen and Lorraine, visible only out of the corner of her eye. Margaret doesn't understand it— sometimes she wonders if it's there at all. When she asks them about it, they say nothing is wrong at all.

In May of '48, Lorraine is transferred to Hawaii. Helen and Margaret organize a gigantic sendoff party. At some point, while Lorraine is surrounded by men who want to sleep with her and women who want to be her, Margaret looks up and Helen is gone. She finds her on the upstairs balcony with a glass of champagne and a cigarette, looking out at the base.

"What are you doing?"

"Just enjoying the breeze. Don't worry, I'll be down soon." She checks her watch. "It'll be time for cake in a few minutes."

"Yeah." The wind lifts the smell of clematis up to them. It's a beautiful night. It would be easy to just stand there quietly and wait for Helen to finish her cigarette. She'll never understand why she says, "Helen? Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course. Always."

"What happened between you and Lorraine?

Helen looks like maybe she's going to lie— there's the tell, a familiar tightness in her jaw— but then she thinks better of it. "Nothing happened. It's just… all in my head, I guess. Or maybe in both our heads."

"What do you mean?" She's afraid to press more, doesn't want to ruin the rare moment of emotion without any attempt at deflection.

Helen smiles a little ruefully. "I know it's stupid, but sometimes I see you and her, and… I don't know. I guess I got too used to things just being me and you." She looks away when she says, "But you and Lorraine have something special that I never will. She'll always have met you first." She doesn't sound bitter, just a little wistful. When Margaret doesn't say anything right away, Helen looks up. "You gonna laugh at me?" Too late, Margaret notices the lilt in Helen's voice: she's drunk. (Already, again; it's the third time this week.) She could yell, or lecture, or actually laugh, which might be the cruelest thing she could do. But she's buzzed from the champagne, and she's not in the mood to lecture, and she doesn't want to hurt her. 

"Helen, that's the dumbest thing I've heard since Sylvia told me she passed out over a patient because she didn't eat breakfast. So Lorraine met me first. She made a bad few years into good ones. Well, I met you now."

"It's not the same. "

"No, of course not." She doesn't think anything of resting one hand on Helen's elbow, but Helen starts as if shocked, and looks right at her. Neither of them moves away. Helen's eyes look much darker than their normal gray in this light. "But you and I have something else too, don't we?" It comes out sounding more serious than a light reassurance.

Helen leans forward a little. She's smiling in spite of herself. "Margaret, you're—"

Someone yells from below. "Houlihan! That you?"

They look at each other. Helen raises one eyebrow: _better answer that._ "Yeah," she calls before Margaret can answer herself.

"Well, come down, we need you in the kitchen!"

"That's our cue," says Helen, and stubs her cigarette out on the railing. "Come on. The party won't keep forever."

The next morning, Margaret sees Lorraine into a jeep, and then she's gone. She never does tell Helen what Lorraine was to her. She figures it's only fair— Helen never told her what she was going to say on the balcony.

*******

"Korea?" Lorraine repeats softly.

"They're putting me in charge of a MASH unit. Head nurse. I had to tell you first."

There's a crackly silence before Lorraine finally says, "First? You mean you haven't told anyone else yet?" The operator probably thinks that she's referring to Margaret's parents, but they both know who she's really talking about.

"No. You're the first." She lets it sink in. "Now, look, I don't know when I'll get the chance to speak to you again."

"Margaret. Don't talk like that. You'll be alright."

"You don't know that, Lo. I had to say it in case I don't get the chance again." Silence. She leans her head against the cool wall and forces herself to say the words without crying. "You know I love you, right?"

She hears Lorraine smile a little. "Of course I know that. I love you too." She says something else about surgeons and army nurses, but all Margaret can think is _goodbye, goodbye._ She's not sure if it's directed at Lorraine or herself.


	3. hawkeye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> October 1951 (or thereabouts, because the show timeline is a hot mess).

After Lorraine leaves, Margaret sits with her words for a long time. About a week later, she's sitting under the twisted tree on the hill overlooking the compound, staring at the sky, when Hawkeye shows up. "What are you doing here?" He clutches at his chest like an old woman.

"What are _you_ doing here?" she retorts, feeling strangely as though she's been caught at something.

"I came to smoke." He fishes in his pocket and holds up two slightly battered cigarettes for her to see.

She frowns at him. "You don't smoke."

He shrugs and ambles over to sit next to her. His knees crack when he sits down; he suddenly seems much older than thirty-two. "I found them at the bottom of my footlocker when I was looking for my spare shoelaces. Trapper used to keep them around for when he couldn't get cigars."

"That doesn't answer the question of what you're doing here."

"I needed a vacation, but my travel agent was in Bora Bora for the weekend, so I had to make arrangements myself. This was the best I could get on such short notice."

"Oh. Well, I'm not leaving. I got here first."

"That's okay. Vacations are more fun when you have someone else along anyway."

"Where's BJ?"

"Writing to Peg again. Some neighbor gave her the glad eye at a block party." He doesn't actually roll his eyes, and neither does Margaret, but it's implied. "He wouldn't have been good company in that kind of mood anyway. Not that you're much better, moping under a tree."

"I'm not moping."

"Uh-huh." He gives her a long, considering look, seemingly unfazed by the glare she's shooting back at him. "Listen, I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

"So tell me yours first. Why are you smoking those?"

He fumbles in his pockets for a match. "Couldn't bear to keep 'em around," he says with one cigarette clamped between his teeth. "Don't want the reminder. Can't bear to throw them out either. And just two isn't enough to trade for anything. So I figured I'd put 'em to good use." He finally lights it and takes a long drag, making a face as he exhales. "Plus, Charles said he'd line my sheets with powdered eggs if I smoked them in the Swamp. So that's mine. What's yours?" He looks back down at her expectantly.

Margaret hesitates. "Can you be honest with me?"

"I always am." He must be really tired, because there's no lecherous grin or joke after the statement.

"Okay. Do you think I make things difficult for myself?

He looks at her in confusion; too late she remembers that he never met Lorraine. "What do you mean?"

Margaret goes through the whole story, from the day Lorraine arrived to when she left.But when she gets to the part where Lorraine said that she wasn't the same person, he frowns. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hawkeye, I wasn't always like this." She flings her arms out, hoping he'll know what she means (a major, stiff, stone, unhappy, alone). "I was… I was wild. I drank and went to parties. I sang when I got tipsy, I snuck into the movies… I laughed like there was no tomorrow. I did crazy things, like stuffing crib notes into my bra—"

He chokes on his cigarette, laughing. "What? You? I don't believe it!"

"It's true! One night we were at this bar…" When she gets to the punchline, she laughs with him as she should have with Lorraine that day in the mess tent.

"You _were_ kind of crazy. Your friend, too. She sounds like a card." He passes the cigarette to her; it's almost down to the filter.

"Yeah. I think you'd like her."

He must hear something in her voice, because he suddenly looks serious when he says, "You two were pretty close, huh?"

"Yeah." She takes a long drag and considers her next words carefully. "Close like… like you and McIntyre."

He snorts and looks back out at the compound, but Margaret sees something in his face shut down. "Maybe," he says quietly, almost to himself. "That was different, though."

She looks at him. "Was it?"

"I'll bet you ten dollars it was." She hands him the cigarette back before he can ask. Evidently he isn't getting the hint.

"Don't waste your money." Now he looks at her, and she realizes all at once that he's more scared than she's seen him since Henry died. Before he can come up with a joke or deflect or get angry, she touches his arm gently and says, "Hawkeye. Who am I going to tell?"

"I don't know. Anyone. The army."

"If I wanted to do that, I would have done it when I first caught you and McIntyre at it. I could have ratted on you even after he went home, at least while Frank was still around. But I didn't. And I'm not going to."

"Why not?" He seems genuinely curious, as though he really believes she would hurt him like that.

"Because," she says instead of crying, "of me and Lorraine." She can see the exact moment when it clicks for Hawkeye.

"Is that why your marriage is such a mess?"

"What? No! It's been over between me and Lorraine for years— that has nothing to do with this! Why would you even _say_ something like that? What's wrong with you?"

"Jeez, take it easy, I was just testing a hypothesis. Evidently it was a lousy one." He passes her the cigarette as a peace offering. She grudgingly accepts it. "How far did it go?"

"Not very. We were young. We fooled around a little…" She stops short of telling him any details. After all, he's still Hawkeye Pierce, and this is still the army. "It should have gone further than it did. We both wanted it to, but…"

"She was involved with someone?"

"No. But we were best friends, old friends, and it just couldn't go further than that. We knew each other too well for that. And then… well. There was the army."

He's quiet for all of five seconds before he says, "I was right, you know. It was different with Trapper." He waves his hands around as he explains the whole situation with Trapper: a complicated open marriage, a few drunken trysts that quickly became more serious… She'd pieced most of it together on her own already, but it seems like he needs to tell someone, so she lets him talk until he runs out of words. As she listens, Margaret thinks that maybe Lorraine is more to her like what Carlye Walton is to Hawkeye. Someone who has to turn things upside down whenever she comes into Margaret's life, someone who never really leaves. Someone who, whenever you look at them, you see only what you could have been if only you were a little different.

When he's done, they're quiet for a little while. They watch people meandering about the compound, as small as ants. There's someone next to a horse who must be Potter; a figure in bright yellow who can only be Klinger. Hawkeye lights the second cigarette. It's almost peaceful. But peace doesn't last for long, and eventually she says, "You didn't answer my question. Do you think she's right?"

"About what?"

"That I… I make it hard. For anyone to love me. So they don't."

He puts the cigarette onto the ground, but doesn't stub it out. "That's not true. You're loved."

Margaret gives him a look that says _you're so full of shit._ "By who? You don't even like me, remember? I'm army."

He nods seriously. "That's true. I don't like you all the time," he says, because Hawkeye, for all his flaws, never lies to her. "Especially when you start in on all the army shit. "He pauses. "But I do love you. You know?"

"Yeah," she says. "I know." And it's hard to say it back, so she just puts his head on his shoulder and looks back out at the compound. After a moment, she feels his cheek come to rest on the top of her head. They stay like that, not speaking or smoking or moving, until the second cigarette burns out on the ground.

They don't mention the conversation for the rest of the war, but Margaret thinks about it all the time. When she divorces Donald, when she meets Scully, when Scully disappoints her and leaves, she thinks, _I'll never be free and easy again._ When she yells at BJ for throwing a tantrum over nothing, she thinks _maybe you lost time, but I lost a whole person,_ and she doesn’t say it because he wouldn’t get it anyway. She thinks about it when she’s alone, and when she’s in the O Club.

When Helen sends word that she's coming to Korea, all Margaret can think about is what Lorraine said. She almost convinces herself that Helen won't like her anymore, that everything is going to be different and terrible. But when Helen actually gets there, it doesn't happen. They laugh like they did five years ago, stay up all night talking, convince Potter to give them joint R&R to Tokyo. (Hawkeye raises his eyebrows when she tells him that over breakfast, but she kicks him in the shins before he can say anything stupid.) Helen treats her exactly the same, and the rock around Margaret's heart falls away.

"I bet you think I've changed," she finally dares to say, one morning or evening or middle of the night, when they're stripping their masks off after OR.

Helen tilts her head, considering the statement. "Yeah. You have."

Margaret huffs in exasperation, partly to cover for the gnawing feeling in her stomach. "Can you please elaborate?"

But Helen just laughs and shakes her head. "I didn't mean it in a bad way. Yeah, you've changed, but so has everyone. You're still my best friend, Major." And she slings one arm around Margaret's shoulder, brings her in close. "Now come on. Let's go lose some money for the orphans before we pass out."


	4. helen (again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 1964 again.

They go home. Eat dinner. Take BJ and Hawkeye to the airport. Hug them goodbye and promise to visit soon. Drive back. But the strange crackling thing between them is still there. Margaret is bizarrely relieved when they start to fight— this at least is something she knows how to do, if not with Helen then with everyone else she's ever loved.

It starts with a simple disagreement over whose turn it is to take the dogs for the late-night walk, and escalates quickly. Margaret accuses Helen of shirking her responsibilities. Helen returns that she just forgot, that not everyone can be perfect. Margaret screams that she's sorry that she can't be what Helen wants her to be. Helen shouts back that she can't be what Margaret wants either.

Just as Margaret is about to say something she knows she'll regret, Helen starts to laugh a little hysterically. "Jesus Christ," she says. "What are we doing?"

"What?"

"I mean, what are we doing?"

"Here in Virginia?"

"Yes!" Margaret's heart stutters. _Here we go_ , she thinks, _out with it at last, you don't want me here and now you're going to say the words._

But then Helen says, "No— no, not at all. I don't know." Helen stares at her for a minute before breathing out through her nose and kicking the dishwasher shut. "I'm going to take a shower," she says slowly. Margaret stands there and watches her go. She stays there for what feels like forever but is really only a few minutes, waiting for her body to figure out whether it wants to crack a plate or start crying.

Upstairs, she hears the water start.

*******

The bathroom door has been left ajar, but Margaret still knocks. There's a beat before Helen calls, "Yeah."

"I'm coming in." Helen doesn't say anything, which Margaret takes as assent. She sits on the edge of the bathtub and stares at the tile, listening to the water run.

"What did you mean, what are we doing?" she says at last.

"I meant, why were we fighting?"

"Were? I thought we still are."

"Nobody's yelling. It's not a fight."

"You said that I'm uptight and obsessed with perfection. As far as I'm concerned, we're still fighting."

"What?" The water stops. "I didn't say that. I said that not everyone can be perfect all the time."

"Well, I know what you meant. You think there's something wrong with me."

Helen yanks the shower curtain back. "I wasn't talking about you."

"Then who were you talking about?"

She snorts incredulously. "Me, stupid. I'm not—" And then she stops and stares at Margaret. "I was about to say that I'm not Lorraine. Huh."

Now it's Margaret's turn to snort. "What the fuck does Lorraine have to do with this?"

"Isn't that why you're upset?" Helen is suddenly calm now that she's identified the source of the problem, and does not appear to be at all bothered by the fact that they're having this discussion while she's completely naked. Margaret wants to rip the bathtub out of the floor.

"I'm not upset!" Helen gives her a look that says _I've been seeing an analyst for a decade and I have scientific proof that you're completely full of shit, so just forget it._ "Alright, so I'm upset. But it's not because I want you to be more like Lorraine. That's just idiotic."

"So why are you upset?"

The words spill out before she has a chance to think about them or take them back: "Because Lorraine said I'm uptight and she's absolutely right!"

Helen frowns. "When did she say that?"

"In Korea!"

"But that was… twelve years ago."

"It doesn't matter, she's still right. I'm not free and easy anymore, but when I look at her, I see… me as I was then. And I can't get that back."

The words hang in the air as Helen leans against the wall of the shower and gives her a long, unreadable look. "Do you want to go back?"

"No! That's the worst part! I left the army more than a decade ago. and yet I see her and… she’s a colonel at 45, still as easy-going and happy as she was when I met her. And I think, maybe I could have been that, and then I get angry with myself for thinking that, because I don’t even _want_ to be a colonel! For Christ's sake, I left because I didn't want to be a part of the army anymore, not after Korea. And then I'm angry all over again, because I left. So did you. So why can't she?" Margaret realizes that she's yelling.

Helen finally steps out of the shower and starts drying herself off. "Your reason was bigger than mine, Margaret. You left because you lived through hell. After they made me a major, they were going to send me to Vietnam. You know that. And I couldn't do that again. Stitching up little boys, running out of medicine, never sleeping. Not after nine years being sober, and not when I would be apart from you. So I left, and it was easy because you were already gone."

"But she was there. She saw what we did." Margaret's almost surprised to hear how upset she sounds.

They're on more familiar territory now: Margaret angry and Helen talking her through it. "For three months, and she wasn't in charge like you were, and she never went through withdrawal like I did." The word is a surprise to both of them. Even after years of therapy, they rarely talk about the drinking. Helen shrugs on her robe and bends over to wrap her hair into a towel. "She won't leave." She straightens and looks down at Margaret, still perched on the edge of the tub. "But you know that."

It isn't a question, but she answers it anyway. "I do. And I still wish things were different."

Helen touches her cheek gently. "You know it doesn't matter to me. I loved you when you were carefree, but I still love you now. As much if not more."

Margaret has to swallow around the lump in her throat before she can reply. "I know. And I love you for that. It's just… it's like looking through a mirror backwards."

She expects to have to elaborate, but Helen just nods and sighs, "I know what you mean."

"You do?"

"I know it's not quite the same. You two have a longer history than I do with either of you." Helen gets up and moves to the mirror. "But it's like you said— I saw her for just a few minutes after _years,_ and I could tell she was more or less the same as she was when we met in Georgia, all those years ago." She watches Helen smooth lotion over her calves, the rhythm familiar after so many years. "You saw yourself in her, and I saw myself. Everything I was came rushing back, everything I said and felt and did. Drinking, partying, doing stupid things to get attention. Punching some guy's lights out for talking to us wrong. Being angry, confused, resentful. A lot of running away from myself. A lot of time wasted on letting myself be chased when I should have been chasing you." She keeps her tone light, but Margaret knows better.

"Helen."

"Why didn't I, back then?" She smacks the container of lotion onto the counter and spins around to face Margaret, somewhere between pleading and angry.

"Because I didn't know that about myself, not really."

"But I did! I knew!"

"It wouldn't have worked, not back then. I was always trying to please people then." Margaret knows it's true as soon as she says it. "I was… I don't know." _Softer. Harder. Stupider. Younger._ None of them quite fit.

"No. I guess it wouldn't have." Helen turns back to the mirror and keeps smoothing lotion over her forearms. She's quiet for a little while. "Still, sometimes I wondered… if life wouldn’t have been easier. If one of us had been a man when we met."

Margaret smiles a little, although Helen can't see her. "Two young officers, heading up the ranks?"

"Yeah. One of us in Class A's, and the other in a dress… maybe we’d meet in the dance hall." Margaret can picture it: the lights, the music, the scuffed floor made glossy again every Friday afternoon.

"We’d kiss," she says. Helen smiles at her in the bathroom mirror.

"We’d fall in love. People would whistle when we walked by. There they go, Whitfield and Houlihan."

"We’d probably get married quick. Me in a suit, you in a white dress…"

"We’d still be madly in love."

"And then the war would have taken us away," Margaret murmurs. She gets up and leans against the counter next to Helen, back to the mirror. "Maybe you’d go first, or maybe I would. And then we would have been squeezing love through a telephone wire. Eventually we would come back to each other and try to make it work. Maybe it would work still, maybe it wouldn’t. But we would be different from when we started, and maybe we wouldn't have loved each other the same way." Helen looks at her; a lock of her hair is escaping from the towel.

"You think it would have been harder? Like that?" She sounds like she's looking for a much bigger answer than _yes_ or _no._

"Yeah. I do." And the bigger answer is that it's stupid to fight about the fact that they can't change the past when they're here now, and she would never trade the last ten years of living in this house with Helen for the ability to go back to those dizzying few months with Lorraine when she was trying to figure herself out, and that she doesn't really want Helen to be anything like Lorraine because then she wouldn't be Helen, and that she loves her as she is.

But that's hard to say, so she just reaches over and takes the towel from Helen's head. Margaret moves to stand behind her and starts combing the ends of Helen's hair with her fingers, trusting her to know what it means. And she does, because she smiles a little.

After a couple of minutes, Margaret clears her throat. "You know, younever told me what you were going to say."

Helen makes a face at her in the mirror. "Say when?"

"The night of Lorraine's farewell party. Before she left for Hawaii."

"…Margaret, that was almost twenty years ago!"

"Let me finish. We were on the balcony—"

"Woman, you have a memory like an elephant." Helen shakes her head, but her eyes crinkle, so she isn't really mad. She tips her head back a little so Margaret can get the tangles at the top of her head. "I would hate to be your enemy."

"Well, you knew exactly what I was talking about, so you don't have a leg to stand on. And anyway, we're practically married, you have nothing to worry about." A slow grin spreads over Helen's face, but she doesn't say anything. Just nods to say _go on._ "Anyway, you were tying yourself into a knot because you were jealous, and then I said not to be, and then you were about to say something, but we were interrupted. You never told me what you were going to say." Helen opens her mouth, still smiling. "And _don't_ tell me you forgot, because I know damn well that you didn't, even if you _were_ drunk as a skunk."

"Okay, I didn't. But you know, it's kind of ironic. We could have had this fight ten years ago and saved us the trouble."

"Whitfield, I'll put cold cream in your clean hair."

"Okay, alright. I remember… I was secretly happy, but you were clearly sad that Lorraine was leaving. And I felt awful for being happy. I didn't know what to do with that, so I stole a bottle of champagne and drank it all by myself on the balcony. The drunker I got, the more I thought about you. How much you loved Lorraine, how strong your connection was even though you were only friends. How you might never want me in the way I wanted you." Margaret wraps her arms around Helen's waist, rests her chin on Helen's bony shoulder. "I just stood there, getting sadder and sadder, and then there you were." Helen sets her hands on Margaret's. They smile at each other in the mirror.

"There I was," she repeats.

"Yes. You were very beautiful, and you told me I was being stupid. And you were there exactly when I needed you. Just then, I loved you so much that I was about to tell you everything I was thinking."

"And then you didn't." Helen's mouth turns down at the corners like she's trying not to laugh.

"No." Helen turns around to face Margaret. "But I'm telling you now." 

Margaret smiles and leans in to kiss her. "I'll take it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of notes:   
> 1\. MoMA really did loan part of their collection to the National Gallery in late '63 to '64 while they were closed for remodeling! The painting Helen references in chapter 1 is Umberto Boccioni's [Study for Elasticity](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/35857).   
> 2\. I owe this fic to "Dog Years" by Maggie Rogers and "Let's Go Away For A While" by The Beach Boys. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading! This will probably appeal to like less than ten people, but writing it has been incredibly fun. Let me know what worked or didn't in the comments. I'm on tumblr @dykemulcahy if you want to come and say hi or talk to me about Lorraine (I have a lot of thoughts.) <3


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